The invention pertains to digital data processing and, more particularly, to methods and apparatus for enterprise application integration. It has application in the dynamic consolidation of disparate databases, e.g., of marketing, e-commerce or other transactional data, over a network, such as the Internet.
It is not uncommon for a single company to have several database systems—separate systems not interfaced—to track internal and external planning and transaction data. Such systems might of been developed at different times throughout the history of the company and are therefore of differing generations of computer technology. For example, a marketing database system tracking customers may be ten years old, while an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system tracking inventory might be two or three years old. Integration between these systems is difficult at best, consuming specialized programming skill and constant maintenance expenses.
A major impediment to enterprise application integration (EAI) is the consolidation of these disparate legacy databases with one another and with newer e-commerce databases. For instance, inventory on-hand data gleaned from a legacy ERP system may be difficult to combine with customer order data gleaned from web servers that support e-commerce (and other web-based) transactions. This is not to mention difficulties, for example, in consolidating resource scheduling data from the ERP system with the forecasting data from the marketing database system.
An object of this invention is to provide improved methods and apparatus for digital data processing and, more particularly, for enterprise application integration.
A further object of the invention is to provide such methods and apparatus as can be readily and inexpensively integrated with legacy, current and future database management systems.
A still further object of the invention is to provide such methods and apparatus as can be implemented incrementally or otherwise without interruption of enterprise operation.
Yet a still further object of the invention is to provide such methods and apparatus as to facilitate ready access to up-to-date enterprise data, regardless of its underlying source.
Yet still a further object of the invention is to provide such methods and apparatus as permit flexible presentation of enterprise data in an easily understood manner.